THE ITALIAN WAY – Experience true Italy in West London – Capuccino: making good things beautiful
Ca’puccino: making good things beautiful
LONDON – Ca’puccino, a young, up and coming Italian coffee company is opening once again in London. After the success of its first store in Harrods, the boutique coffee house is launching on the 27th of July at Westfield Shopping Centre in Shepherds Bush. Famed for ‘making good things beautiful: The Italian Way’, Ca’puccino will open its doors once more to allow consumers to rediscover the traditional Italian flavours of sweet and salty pastries, perfect for an over-indulgent shopping break, business meetings or for a moment of pure relaxation. Choose from a “Tortina Sbrisolona” with a “Caffè al Tiramisù” or an ice cream made with “Pistacchio di Sicilia” to name just a few examples.
This luxury coffee house consists of staple regional specialities rarely found abroad. Each sandwich created is named after an Italian city and the ice-cream is made purely of natural ingredients and seasonal fruit, which is why only a dozen flavours are available at any one time. Espressos are layered with flavours unique to the store, such as chocolate, hazelnut or zabaglione, whilst the Cappuccinos are heated to exactly the right temperature and frothed to create a perfect consistency to deliver a truly authentic Italian experience. Just some of the best examples of how to stay true to hand-made Italian food. Bursting with style, elegance and class, Ca’puccino impresses the senses on every level.
Before the company launched in 2005, the Ca’puccino team embarked on a 3 year research tour of Italy in order to collect and re-interpret regional recipes to remind their consumers that authentic Italian cuisine lies with the different specialities of its regions.
Ca’puccino is the brainchild of 34 year old Giacomo Moncalvo who has hand picked a team that represents everything that the business should stand for. A team of young people, whose mission is to discover traditional recipes of high uncompromising quality. Together their dream is to bring authentic ‘made in Italy’ food around the world.
As a young and up-and-coming Italian company that has quickly gained an upmarket reputation as the first Italian coffee shop chain, Ca’puccino has always made a big point of keeping the top quality of its natural ingredients and traditional working process intact. While expanding throughout Italy and now London, Ca’puccino has stayed focused on the Italian way of making things good and beautiful. Its cappuccino- making technique and regionally-based specialities are just some of the best examples of how to stay true to hand-made Italian food.
Before the company was launched in 2005, Ca’puccino had embarked on a 3-year research tour of Italy in order to gather and re-interpret regional recipes, as people all too often forget that authentic Italian cuisine lies with the different specialities of its regions. The idea was to let Ca’puccino customers enjoy a “giro d’Italia”, or a Grand Tour of taste, every time they entered one of its coffee shops. This regional concept applies to the whole Ca’puccino menu of espressos, sandwiches, patisserie and ice-cream.
Cappuccinos & Espressos In order to make sure that you are able to taste both the milk and the coffee together in the cup, as opposed to that odd “broth with a froth” that unfortunately too many coffee shops abroad tend to pass off as an Italian cappuccino, the barista must check the milk temperature by keeping a hand on the jug throughout the steaming process and be so experienced as to make
sure that the jug itself does not get over 72 centigrade degrees. Indeed, if the temperature is any higher that this, the overheated milk instantly loses its
proteins and taste.
Besides this, the milk must be frothed up until it becomes creamy as opposed to thin and airy: the core ability of the barista lies in allowing no air bubbles to form inside it, so that the milk does not go flat within seconds as it typically does if the cappuccino is not prepared properly.
Spiked with creamy mixtures exclusive to Ca’puccino, these espressos are a joy
to look at and, of course, to taste. The coffee can be layered with chocolate, hazelnut, custard, or zabaglione-themed creams, or else with a liqueur base of either Limoncino, Amaretto or Marsala. All of them are the result of sheer hand skill, tradition and flair.
Mariano Semino, who has won the much prized Italian championship in cappuccino- making, is working for the Ca’puccino branch at Harrods. He is an expert in creating any taste nuance of cappuccino and espresso you can wish for and is set to bring his expertise to the Westfield branch. Apart from making a big point of cleaning the steamer properly each time, so that milk can never curdle on it and spoil your cappuccino, he jealously guards his secret recipes for the creams he prepares on site to spike his special espressos.
On top of the famed “Professor’s coffee” from Naples, Ca’puccino has recreated the “Bicerìn” (which, in the Turin dialect, means small glass), which is made with hot chocolate, coffee and creamy milk the way it was regularly enjoyed by the first Italian Prime Minister, Camillo Cavour, in the 19th century. Among the other special espressos on the Ca’puccino menu, the “drinkable Tiramisu” is a wonder, with its savoiardo biscuit floating on top. The Bacio di Dama (literally: lady’s kiss) espresso is based on gianduja, Piedmont’s hazelnut chocolate, whereas the taste of the Monte Bianco espresso comes from a sweet chestnut paste. The name of the Panna Cotta espresso speaks for itself.
In outlining its company policy, Ca’puccino has chosen not to be tied down to any of the big coffee-processing companies and other food suppliers. In order to keep the absolute freedom to choose only the very best ingredients and raw materials throughout the menu, Ca’puccino has thus developed its own exclusive medium-bodied and creamy-tasting coffee blend. This is made with 5 different kinds of single-origin Arabica.
Food & Surroundings The menu at Ca’puccino consists of staple regional specialities rarely found abroad, such as the Torta sbrisolona which is made with almonds, maize flour, brown sugar and ground hazelnuts, and the Pastiera Napoletana with its ricotta cheese and candied fruit or the Tortina Caprese, which is traditionally baked by Ca’puccino with almond flour, butter and cocoa. All hazelnuts come from Alba and are traditionally toasted inside a wood oven to retain their finest taste.
Similarly, Ca’puccino has recreated a local dish inside each single sandwich. The Cagliari, for instance, features smoked tuna carpaccio and fresh tomato after a Sardinian recipe. The Novara is made with walnut bread, gorgonzola cheese and fig jam, whereas the Sondrio is filled with bresaola from Lombardy, soft caprino cheese and rocket. A range of locally-inspired focaccias and savoury tartlets, filled for instance with stracchino cheese or artichokes, is also available. The bread itself, which is also made in Italy, contains regional ingredients such as olives, onions, walnuts, bacon and scamorza cheese.
Whereas most “artisan-made” Italian ice creams do contain artificial powders and colourings, Ca’puccino has banned both. The brand uses only the basic natural ingredients, such as egg yolk, milk and cream, the finest chocolate by Bodrato, a most fragrant, pure hazelnut paste from Alba and just the flesh of seasonal fruit, which is why just a dozen flavours are available at any time. All pistachios are from the prized Sicilian Bronte origin.
As a growing brand, Ca’puccino has designed its own style, which is based on coffee and milk colours. All furnishings have been exclusively produced for its branches. The idea is to give customers the impression of entering a soft, creamy, enveloping cappuccino. Despite the physical proximity of Ca’puccino coffee shops to some top designer outlets, the brand’s absolute focus is on the top quality of its own ingredients and products.
Ca’puccino – The Company The success of Ca’puccino marks the first time an Italian coffee shop company shows the ambition of becoming a chain while retaining the top quality of its products.
Ca’puccino’s other coffee shops in Italy are located at Serravalle Scrivia (near Milan), Barberino di Mugello (near Florence), Castel Romano (near Rome) and Genoa’s historical centre.
Everybody at Ca’puccino is under 40 years of age. Apart from the father of the founder, that is. Giacomo Moncalvo, CEO, from Serravalle Scrivia in Italy, is 33 years old. He had the vision of creating a self-financing company (most definitely not a franchising), that retains the absolute freedom over the sourcing of its own ingredients. He is convinced that if the main focus, as always, is to be on the quality of the final products, the crucial thing is for the company to maintain complete control over the raw materials. This way Ca’puccino is not contract- bound to any particular supplier, and can use only its own taste and judgement to source the very best Italian food at all times.
Giacomo Moncalvo has picked a team comprising Mariano Semino, the Italian champion in cappuccino-making, Roberto Quaglia, the head of the food research and development, and Claudio Soffietti, who is responsible for creating the ice-cream recipes. Their dream is to bring authentic made in Italy food around the world. Ca’puccino, which is about to open its first coffee shop
in the historical town centre of Genoa, landed at Harrods in its first venture abroad and is now opening at Westfield as its second. In the eye of the founder, this will be a vantage point for further expansion into London and beyond.
Tel: + 44 020 7348 6101